The Magic Thief (17 page)

O
n the way up the hill to the Dawn Palace, I thought about why the duchess might want to see me.

Did she think I could help deal with the decay of magic? I wanted to help, but as Nevery would be the first to point out, I had no abilities beyond opening gates, making light, and
turning myself into a cat, which I wasn't even sure I could do yet, though I wanted to try it.

The next thought turned my stomach cold, as I walked through the front gate before the Dawn Palace, my feet crunching through crusted snow. The duchess disliked Nevery enough to banish him from the city for twenty years. Was she after Nevery, then? Did she think I would tell her something about Nevery's work?

I shook my head and paid attention to where I was going. When I'd been here before, it had been night and snow had been sifting down from a sky made pink and soft by flickering werelights. Now the snow-covered drive leading up to the front steps of the Dawn Palace had been trodden into a slippery, icy path. I slithered up the front steps, which had been shoveled and sanded, to the double front doors, where two green-coated, leather-booted guards stood with pikes.

“That him?” one of the guards said.

The door handle turned easily, but before I could push the door open and go in, a heavy
hand came down on my shoulder.

“Here, you,” said a guard.

I looked up. Tall and bearded, but not one of the guards from the cells below the Dawn Palace. “I'm supposed to see the duchess,” I said.

“I'll take him,” the guard with the grip on me said to the other. He opened the door and pushed me inside. “Come quietly.” He pulled me along by my arm through the main hall, turning left into a carpeted hallway, then into another, stark stone hallway, one I recognized.

He wasn't taking me to the duchess. I tried to squirm out of his hands.

“Keep still,” the guard said, tightening his grip. “Captain wants to talk to you.”

I didn't want to talk to her. Sure as sure, I didn't.

The guard pulled me down the hallway to a door banded with metal; he opened the door and pushed me inside.

Captain Kerrn was there, sitting at a table in what looked like a guards' common room. Swords and pikes stood in racks against the walls, and a
long table with benches ran the length of the room. Other guards, including the bristle-bearded Farn, sat around the table, some playing cards, others cleaning weapons or oiling their boots.

They all looked up as we came in. When they saw it was me, they all scowled except for Farn, who stood up and went to stand blocking a door in the opposite wall. Kerrn set down a dagger and a whetstone.

I glanced around the room; the only other way out was through the door we'd come in, and the guard behind me would grab me if I tried to get out that way.

Kerrn got up from her bench, and her ice-chip eyes narrowed as she looked me up and down. “The duchess is expecting you, so we will keep this short,” Kerrn said in her funny sounding voice with its
sh
's and gargled
r
's. “I have heard a report on you since yesterday. You may have fooled the duchess and those wizards, but I know what you are. You come from the Twilight, and you are a well-known pickpocket and thief.”

“I used to be,” I said, edging away from her. “But I'm not anymore.”

“You made us look bad,” Kerrn said, “sneaking into the palace, stealing the duchess's jewel.”

“You made yourselves look bad, not catching me,” I said.

Kerrn came around the table, moving fast. I backed toward the door, but before I got there, Kerrn grabbed me by the front of my coat and bent down to snarl into my face. “Listen well, thief. Every guard in the city knows what you are and what you have done.” She gave me a shake that made my teeth rattle. “You put one foot wrong and we will have you.”

She released me and I staggered back, bumping into the guard who had brought me in. All the guards in the room gave me their best menacing looks.

I got the message.

Captain Kerrn turned away. “Take him out of here.”

The door guard grabbed the back of my coat
and hustled me out the door. We quick-walked through the hallways, up the stairs, to the carpeted hallway with the double doors at the end.

My guard knocked at a door, then opened it. Inside, the duchess was sitting behind her desk with a pile of papers before her. As the guard shoved me in, she looked up, removed a pair of spectacles, and raised her eyebrows.

The guard bowed and kept hold of the scruff of my neck.

The duchess rose from behind the desk. “It's all right, guardsman.” She motioned toward the door. “You may go.”

“But Your Grace,” the guard protested, “Captain Kerrn ordered me to watch him until he leaves.”

“Really, guardsman. Go. Call for my advisors to join me shortly.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” the guard said and, with another stiff bow, left the room.

The duchess sat down again. “Now then. Conn, is it?”

I nodded. I wondered what she thought of me. A thief, as Kerrn thought? A wizard, as I'd shown her the day before?

She gestured gracefully toward a chair, a comfortable one before her desk. “Won't you sit down?”

I took off my coat and sat down.

She spent a minute examining me, and I returned the favor. I'd really only seen her a few times before, and then I'd been distracted by the call of my locus magicalicus. I could see her resemblance to Rowan. She was tall and slender and had a pale, thin, beautiful face with lines around the eyes and bracketing her mouth. Her red and gray hair was braided and pinned into a crown atop her head. She wore a dark green dress with a green velvet collar and her family crest—tree and leaf—embroidered on each sleeve. Her long fingers were stained with ink, and she wore her spectacles on a gold chain around her neck.

Finished looking me over, she leaned back in her chair. “Have you my jewel with you?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Mmm.” She looked down her nose at me. “I see that Nevery has not claimed you.”

What was she talking about?

“You do not wear the wingèd hourglass, his family crest,” she said.

“I'm Nevery's, if that's what you're asking,” I said.

“I would not be certain of that if I were you,” she said sharply. “You'd be wise to be careful. Nevery is dangerous and is not to be trusted, by anyone.”

I wondered what she'd do if I told her Nevery had said the same thing about her.

“Do you know the history of this city, Conn? Does your education go so far?”

“I have hardly any education at all,” I said.

“Mmm. Twenty years ago, in a magical pyrotechnic experiment, Nevery blew up parts of Heartsease and the Dawn Palace. Did you know that?”

I shook my head. I wanted to hear more, but the duchess said, “Ask your master about it.” She leaned back and pulled a tasseled rope set into the wall. “Now, you look as if you might like some tea.”

I nodded.

A moment later, the door behind me opened and a servant entered. “Tea, with biscuits,” the duchess said. The door closed. Her eyes narrowed just a bit. It might have been a smile. “I hear you like biscuits.”

“I do,” I said. And I was hungry. Maybe she wasn't so bad. She was Rowan's mother, after all.

She leaned her elbows on the desk and rested her chin on her hand. “You interest me, Conn. My daughter claims you as a friend, and she does not make friends easily.”

The door opened again, and the servant entered on soft feet, bearing a tray of silver tea things and a plate piled high with fluffy biscuits, lightly toasted and dripping with butter. Mmm.
The servant put the tray on the duchess's desk, bowed, and silently left the room.

The duchess went on talking while she poured a cup of tea and leaned across the desk to hand it to me. “I wonder, Conn, about the significance of the fact that the center jewel from the ducal regalia has turned out to be a locus magicalicus.” From a little pitcher on the tray she added a few drops of milk to her tea. “You agree that it is significant?”

I nodded, and swallowed down a bite of buttered biscuit. I could guess what she was going to say next. “And you wonder why me.”

She looked at me over the rim of her cup, her face softened by steam rising from the hot tea. “Indeed. Why did the finest stone in the ducal regalia come to you?”

“I don't know,” I said. And I didn't. I had to think about it some more.

I took a quick drink of my tea. And I reminded myself to be careful; as Nevery had warned, the duchess was like a puzzle lock. She seemed kind,
giving me tea and biscuits, but it didn't mean she was actually kind.

The duchess set down her teacup. “Well, I think the fact that your locus magicalicus came from my regalia is an indication that my family must reconcile itself to magic. Were you aware, Conn, that years ago it was common for the ruling house of Wellmet to have a court magister, a wizard who was given chambers here in the Dawn Palace? Such a wizard would need to have a strong connection with the ducal house.”

What was she saying, exactly?

“I know your master very well,” she went on. “Nevery certainly never wanted to take you on as an apprentice. He would be happy to be relieved of your care. I think you would be wise to leave Nevery's damp and drafty old mansion and come live here, in the Dawn Palace.”

Where she could keep an eye on me, she meant. And even though she was mostly right about Nevery—sure as sure, he hadn't wanted me as an
apprentice—I wasn't leaving Heartsease. I shook my head.

“Very well,” she said.

I eyed the plate of biscuits. Better not have another one. I needed to ask her the right questions. “Duchess,” I said. Was that right? Duchess? Or was I supposed to call her something else?

She raised her eyebrows, waiting.

“What d'you think is happening to the magic in Wellmet?” I asked.

She didn't even blink at the change of subject. “I am told by my advisor that it is a natural ebbing. The problem will eventually reverse itself. I have been assured that the city is not in any danger.”

That didn't make sense. My locus stone was rare and strange, and it showing up when it had made it clear that something big was happening. “But you can see that the magic is leaving us, can't you?” I said. “Without it, the city will die.” I hadn't thought about it that way before, but as I
said it aloud I realized that it was true: if the magic died, then Wellmet would die. Soon.

She gave me a level look. “I am sure you are just repeating Nevery's alarmist ideas.”

“No,” I said, getting frustrated. “Nevery agrees with you. He doesn't think the city is in danger. But you're both wrong.”

“Really.” She shook her head. “And what, exactly, do you think is happening?”

“I don't know.”

The duchess, looking past me at the door to her office, repeated, “I see that you do not. Perhaps my liaison to the magisters can share with you his thoughts on the matter.”

Oh, no. I turned in my chair and, sure enough, Pettivox himself stood in the doorway, tall and broad, his locus magicalicus a thumbnail-shaped gleam of white against his black waistcoat. He strode into the room.

I grabbed my coat and felt in the pocket for my locus stone, but I didn't take it out.

“Well, Magister?” the duchess said.

Pettivox bowed. “Your Grace.” Without looking at me, he went on. “What is Nevery's failed apprentice doing here?”

“Going away,” I said, scrambling to my feet. I looked at the duchess. “Is Pettivox the one who has been telling you not to worry?”

She didn't answer. She didn't have to; I already knew the answer to that question.

As Pettivox turned his glare on me, I edged around him and skiffed out the door. Avoiding the guards, I found my way out of the Dawn Palace to the werelit streets of the Sunrise.

Time to go home to Heartsease. But drats. The duchess would surely tell Pettivox about my locus magicalicus, and Pettivox would tell Crowe. And Nevery was not going to be happy with me.